Sir Garnet wrote:A good principle of game design is to warn, tell or hint to the player to cue him to think about certain things. Borders with tribal or other powers are an example. It would be good to have some clue as to the nature of the relationship. One game technique is pre-programmed messages by characters offering opinions one may take or leave as they may be right or wrong . . . .
see, the best example is the MS87 scenario, for it doesnt work as many of you expect it.
you get the clue of the sea-travel-all-med.sea objectives, you get the chances what might happen in what harbor. yet the messages in the harbors when you arrived, have to tell the WHOLE story again AND the decision taken by your allies. the messages have to be that generic, that they dont tell you what happens next, for they dont know what you did before.
i find that rather messing up. too much dependents on the player. its becoming a "you might still want to do" listing of events in game
if you want to give some immersion into the games feeling/time depicted, then you loose text for explaining event chains
next, on Crete and in Asia minor your allies will be able to be attacked from pirates, then the units will be unlocked anyway despite failing the advised and multiple times precise described event.
other events have ranges in which what happens, others need one or more events firing before. if you bring in that many red messages which tell you information like a "paradox games pop up window you have to click on yourself" you still lack the point to look back in the games history what already happens. unless you create the lack of "future" information in the text as a cost for this "you might want to" informations
imagine what will happen if you get several messages multiple times in 100 turns, you find them exploitable and play streamlined....
the general events, not the eastereggs should be listed in the manual one day, but as they stated, they had no time for it.
...not paid by AGEOD.
however, prone to throw them into disarray.
PS:
‘Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen War . . . in War, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark.‘
Clausewitz